Oral Presentation Society for Freshwater Science 2025 Annual Meeting

Climate change alters the seasonality of nitrogen export in a High Arctic river basin in Northeast Greenland. (118723)

Jennifer L Tank 1 , Shannon L Speir 2 , Ada Pastor 3 , Kirsty Langley 4 , Mikhail Mastepanov 5 , Diogo Bolster 6 , Marc Müller 7 , Tenna Riis 8
  1. University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, United States
  2. Department of Crop, Soil, and Environmental Sciences, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA
  3. GRECO, Institute of Aquatic Ecology, Universitat de Girona, Girona, Spain
  4. Asiaq, Greenland Survey, Nuuk, Greenland
  5. Department of Ecoscience, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark
  6. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, United States
  7. Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland
  8. Department of Biology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

Warming is causing significant changes to catchment hydrology and vegetation characteristics in the Arctic, which may alter riverine nitrogen (N) export to N-limited coastal ecosystems. To better understand the trajectory of change, along with the underlying mechanisms, there is a need to quantify the seasonality of N export over the entire flowing-water season, encompassing the spring thaw period, through peak summer, to the fall senescent period just before refreezing. Here, we use a 20-year dataset of river chemistry and streamflow, combined with remotely-sensed snow and vegetation cover for the Zackenberg River Basin (NE Greenland), to quantify seasonal and decadal changes in riverine N loss. On average, the duration of the flowing-water season has increased by 40 days from 2003 to 2022, resulting in a seasonal expansion of the shoulder periods (i.e., thaw period and senescence). In general, dissolved inorganic N (DIN) export during the thaw period increased, while the sum total of dissolved organic N (DON) export decreased over the 20yr period. As such, DIN is becoming an increasingly significant portion of TDN export, with a clear shift between early and late decades. Bayesian Model Averaging suggested that nitrate-N export was influenced by the period onset date and period duration, especially during the shoulder periods. In contrast, interannual variability in total ammonium-N and DON export was influenced by variation in global- and regional-scale weather metrics [e.g., multi-variate ENSO index (MEI); Greenland Blocking Index (GBI)]. Overall, we highlight the complexity of fluvial N cycling in the Arctic under a changing climate, the combined role of melting and vegetation dynamics, and the potential for distinct drivers of N export across seasonal periods and among N solutes.